Category Archives: Education

Rosie Reid named California Teacher of the Year, 2019

Posted on by

Congratulations to Rosie Reid, an outstanding educator from Walnut Creek, California, who has just been named a California Teacher of the Year for 2019.

Rosie’s career has spanned 16 years, the last two at Northgate High School in the Mt. Diablo Unified School District. She was the first in her family to go to college. She credits this achievement to her teachers, and says she decided to become a teacher to pay this forward.

Rosie, a Language Arts teacher, is a member of the English Learner Review Team which monitors English-language learners and mentors ESL teachers. Most recently, Rosie founded and leads an equity task force at her high school. “I strive to be a status quo disruptor and an agent of social justice, while engaging in a rigorous, standards-based English curriculum,” declares Rosie. “So often teachers feel that if they are thinking about issues of equity and implicit bias, they must compromise rigor in order for all students to be successful; in fact it is by helping our most socially marginalized students develop literacy (and numeracy) skills that we may achieve social equity,” she asserts.

Rosie employs a number of strategies to achieve success in her classroom. She uses standardized test data to view individual student progress, identify patterns with groups of students, and remediate achievement gaps for marginalized students. In addition, she invites guest speakers to come to her classroom, and she designs real world projects to give her students a broader perspective. In order to encourage participation from all students, Rosie requires daily practice of language skills. To ensure inclusivity, she selects materials from a diverse range of authors and articles about relevant and compelling social issues so that every student sees themselves in the coursework, feels the work is important, and realizes how much their voices matter.

Rosie Reid: a true chalkboard champion.

Willa Brown Chappell: The teacher of Tuskegee Airmen

Posted on by

Many exceptional teachers use their instructional expertise to work with students outside of the classroom. Willa Brown Chappell, the first African American woman licensed to fly in the United States, is an excellent example of this.

Willa was born January 22, 1906, in Glasgow, Kentucky. She earned her degree in education from Indiana State Teachers College in 1927. She also completed the requirements for an MBA from Northwestern University in 1937. Following her college graduation, Willa was employed as a high school teacher at Roosevelt High School in Gary, Indiana, and later as a social worker in Chicago.

Lt__Willa_Beatrice_Brown[1]

Willa was always seeking challenges and adventures in her life, especially if they could be found outside the limited career fields normally open to African Americans at that time. She decided to learn to fly, studying with Cornelius R. Coffey, a certified flight instructor and expert aviation mechanic at a racially segregated airport in Chicago. Willa earned her private pilot’s license in 1938. Later, Willa and Cornelius married and founded the Coffey School of Aeronautics at Harlem Airport in Chicago, where together they trained black pilots and aviation mechanics. Willa conducted the classroom instruction and Cornelius conducted the in-flight practice.

In 1939, Willa, Cornelius, and their friend Enoch P. Waters founded the National Airmen’s Association of America. Their goal was to secure admission for black aviation cadets into the US military. As the organization’s national secretary and the president of the Chicago branch, Willa became an activist for racial equality. She persistently lobbied the US Government for integration of black pilots into the segregated Army Air Corps and the federal Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPTP), a system established by the Civil Aeronautics Authority just before the outbreak of World War II. The CPTP’s purpose was to provide a pool of civilian pilots for use during national emergencies. Willa was given the rank of an officer in this first integrated unit. In 1948, when Congress finally voted to allow separate-but-equal participation of blacks in civilian flight training programs, the Coffey School of Aeronautics was one of a select few private aviation schools selected for participation. Later, her flight school was selected by the US Army to provide black trainees for the Air Corps pilot training program at the Tuskegee Institute. Willa was instrumental in training more than 200 students who went on to become Tuskegee pilots. Eventually, Willa Brown became the coordinator of war-training service for the Civil Aeronautics Authority and a member of the Federal Aviation Administration’s Women’s Advisory Board. She was the first black female officer in the Civil Air Patrol and the first black woman to hold a commercial pilot’s license in the United States.

This remarkable educator and pioneer aviatrix passed away on July 18, 1992. In 2010, Willa was awarded the Distinguished Alumni Award by the Indiana State University Alumni Association. She was inducted into the Aviation Hall of Fame in her native Kentucky in 2003.

To find out more about this remarkable chalkboard champion, you can read a chapter about her in my book, Chalkboard Heroes, which is available on amazon.com and the website for Barnes and Noble.

Check out this teacher-made YouTube channel for ESL videos

Posted on by

Here is a wonderful resource you might want to check out. Rachel’s English is a YouTube channel dedicated to helping non-native speakers improve their spoken English and listening comprehension.

Philadelphia teacher Rachel creates You Tube channel to share her ESL videos.

The channel is created by ESL teacher Rachel. Having taught off and on since 1999, Rachel became interested in developing a pronunciation-focused resource while she was living in Germany under the Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship program in 2008. Rachel, who is also a classical singer, studied with highly acclaimed vocal teachers and coaches and brings a body of detailed knowledge connected to the voice, placement, and the musical nature of speech to her work as a pronunciation coach.

Rachel lives in Philadelphia.  She was born and raised in Florida. She went to college in Indiana where she studied applied math, computer science, and music. She also attended graduate school for Opera Performance in Boston. Then she spent eight years in New York City, where many of her videos were filmed, before moving to Philadelphia.

Rachel currently offers 625 videos through her channel, and she has 1,734,725 subscribers. Way to go, Rachel!

Washington’s Mandy Manning named 2018 National Teacher of the Year

Posted on by

Mandy Manning

Mandy Manning of Spokane, Washington, named the 2018 National Teacher of the Year.

Congratulations to exemplary educator Mandy Manning of Spokane, Washington, who has been named the 2018 National Teacher of the Year.

Mandy teaches English to newly-arrived immigrant students in the Newcomer Center at Joel E. Ferris High School in Spokane.

As 2018 National Teacher of the Year, Mandy says she would like to encourage educators to teach their students to overcome their fears and seek out new experiences. “Let’s teach our students to be fearless,” she declares. “Let’s teach them to be brave when confronted with uncertainty. Brave when they fail. Brave in meeting new people. Brave in seeking opportunities to experience things outside of their understanding,” she continues.

In her classroom, Mandy designs lessons that help her students process trauma, celebrate their home countries and culture, and learn about their new community.Mandy says she makes it a priority to create connections between her students and the community inside and outside of the school. She has invited district leaders, campus resource officers, community members of color, and professional writers to visit her classroom. These visits help her students learn cultural expectations and how to express themselves effectively. In return, her students teach these leaders where they come from, who they are, and the contributions they make to the community.

“All of us together make this world interesting and good. We must teach our students to overcome their fears and seek out new experiences. The only way to teach fearlessness is to show it. We must show kindness by getting to know our students, learning about them, and showing them how to connect,” Mandy asserts.

Mandy earned a Bachelor’s degree from Eastern Washington University, her Master’s degree from West Texas A & M University, and a second Master’s degree from Northwest Institute of Literary Arts. In addition, Mandy is a National Board Certified Teacher. This amazing educator inaugurated her career in the teaching profession when she worked for the Peace Corps in Armenia in 1999. She then spent several years working as a teacher and assistant teacher in schools in Japan and across the U.S. Mandy has taught for the past 19 years, seven of which have been in her current position.

In addition to recognition as the 2018 National Teacher of the Year, Mandy has earned the National Education Association Foundation’s California Casualty Award for Teaching Excellence in 2017 and the Kim Plemons Leadership Award from the Spokane Education Association in 2015.